December 29
2005

Rotten Tomatoes' "Bombs to the Bomb".
Even though Serenity has one of the highest Tomatometers of 2005 and is not mentioned in their "Bombs to the Bomb" feature (in which they relate ways to make the year's worst films into Oscar contenders), Rotten Tomatoes took it upon themselves to include an image from the BDM in their montage promoting the feature.

Yep, for absolutely no reason, Alan Tudyk is sandwiched between images of Rob Schneider in Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Charlize Theron in Aeon Flux, and Zach Braff's Chicken Little from the film of the same name. It doesn't really help that just a couple inches below Alan's face is the line, "Transforming 2005's worst flicks into Oscar picks."

Trust me, folks:

It is not mentioned anywhere in the feature whatsoever. In fact, the image used in the montage isn't even included in the feature.

What's even more puzzling is that the same week it decides to put Alan's face to represent a negative feature in which his movie isn't even included, they've listed it as their Certified Fresh DVD & Video Pick of the Week.

Weird indeed!! However, this is even less worrying than the EW ‘scare’ which did not feature on any of the places (apart from here) that I regularly visit or search for movie and TV or dvd news.

What conspiracy theories do we have this time? A disgruntled, bitter member of the spoilery ‘Save Wash’ mob? A seething Star Wars fan who thinks they're enjoying a moment of power? A cynical attempt to increase traffic?

Also, no offence mate (honest, at all) but gossi, I’m beginning to wonder if your username has been taken over by a very pessimistic scaremongering demon. It is weird, but, to channel Joyce, I’m with the "its not the end of the world" crowd, even if we are in denial.

To jump genres and be Pollyanna for a moment. If the picture causes doubters or resentful anti-Serenity, anti- Joss types to click on the picture with glee – I just wish I could see the disappointment on their faces when they find out that Serenity is not in the bomb category at all but front and centre as DVD pick of the week. Roll on the extra traffic.

purplehazel - no offense taken. There is some behind the scenes stuff going on which my last sentence was refering to which will become clear later. Obviously, it's not related to this topic though. All honesty, I don't much care what Rotten Tomatoes do, but the timing is funny (in a bad way).

Well, let's look at this Rotten Tomatoes thing this way. The only people who will recognize Alan and realize it is a picture of him from "Serenity" as opposed to his many other films (like being the dread pirate Steve in "Dodgeball, for example) will be us , and we won't think the worse of "Serenity" for this unfortunate association.

So... let's just assume someone at Rotten Tomatoes is playing with us. I'll revise my reference to a "cynical attempt to increase traffic" to "a playful attempt to increase traffic". We do after all seem to be very wind-upable - by members of the board as well as other sites ;-)

Heh, this is pretty weird. Has anyone tried e-mailing the people at rotten tomatoes to ask what's going on? On second thought: scratch that. E-mailing has not done us much good in the past. But it does make you wonder what was going on when the advert was made.